Lacking, Part 2
by ClosetDegrassiLover
Summary: By request to extend Lacking, I wrote it from KC's perspective! Minor S9 spoilers.


**Hey everybody! There was a really great response to my Lacking story, actually a bunch of people wanted me to continue. Now, don't let this fool you! It isn't a sequel or a continuation (I still have to finish Swings first...lol), but I thought it'd be really interesting to do KC with the same title. Here we go!**

Some days, I just want to kick everything in sight. It's like there is an innate anger the fumes deep within me, something genetic that I inherited from my father. If I didn't have a restriction on my life that rivaled prison bars, I'd probably be deep in the bottle now. I just can't stop the trembling, the white anger, the need to destroy everything in sight.

Does that make me a sociopath? I could burn down Degrassi and not shed a tear. Everything was going so well for a while. I got a mere glimpse at what normalcy felt like and I crave more. Now it's just dangled in front of me like a toy, there to tease me when I'm at my most low. Everyone always says _Didn't we almost have it all_. Well, yeah. I almost had it all. I was starting over and everything got ruined.

Burning Degrassi seems like the only logical option.

But I suppose it only seems logical because I'm not sure what normalcy is. I wanted to _be_ normal and look where it got me – in between a war of two completely opposite girls and in a hotel room with a creepy loner perv.

When I think about my time with Clare, I have to reach the assumption that we're too different. People say opposites attract, but I'm coming to find that this assumption is a load of bull. We were different in every way and it showed. The only issue I find after dealing with our breakup is that I cannot, for the life of me, decide where the ultimate demise was. True, it could be my crazy coach, but I can't help but feel that in some part… I was…

Lacking.

It's only in the deepest part of myself I could ever admit these thoughts, just because I have to shove them aside so I won't shoot myself in the head. Painful, but true. It seems all my life, all I have ever been, was lacking. I cannot blame myself for the hole my parents dug themselves into, but at my most honest, I cannot help but wonder: Why wasn't I enough?

Shouldn't the son be enough to persuade any loving parent to do better for them? Why wasn't loving me enough? Why was the drugs more important? Always, always I have been lacking.

I step on the grounds of Degrassi and toward my better judgment, I have not matches. No accelerant, blowtorch, or any malicious intent of any kind. If anything, I feel drained.

I see her standing there, that asshole Derek making fun, as usual. Against my instincts, I fight not to go up and tell him off. Do I even have that right anymore? I did the most cliché thing a guy can do: I took the blond cheerleader over the smart girl who can actually write a coherent sentence. I believe I forfeited any right to protect Clare as soon as a chose.

Deep down, where the longing for my parents' unrequited love dwells, I think of Clare. I think of the conversations we had and how she told me she cared. She looked me directly in the eyes and I knew, I _knew_ that she meant it. A sentence, as simple as it may be, that had never been honestly uttered with me in mind. In that place deep inside me, I know I made a mistake. I will forever long for that trusting word, but I know I don't deserve it.

Because I'm lacking.

I follow Clare up the stairs, hoping she'll catch my eye and say something. Say something that gives me the right to interact with her. Because as of yet, I cannot comprehend a reason. Without any thought or agenda, I burst out, "Hey Clare."

She turns, startled. When our eyes meet, that place inside me opens and I don't know whether to laugh or cry. All I know is that I am lacking. And that I will work throughout the rest of these days to figure out how to expel that from my system.

"Hi KC."

I made a vow from that moment on to not speak another word to her until I found a bridge I could create to connect the distance between us. I wouldn't call it optimism, but a hope I hadn't felt in a while. Perhaps I wouldn't have to burn the school down after all.

**Author's Note: I hope you enjoyed! Please R/R and I promise to get Swings back in full gear! (That wasn't coercive, I meant that as two separate statements, lol.)**


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